1. Field
The present disclosure relates to electronic communications. In particular, it relates to a method and system for authentication of electronic communications.
2. Related Art
Recently, emails from fake senders have multiplied immensely, causing problems of trustworthiness of electronic communications as well as cluttering inboxes around the world, costing valuable time to readers as well as consuming precious infrastructure resources, such as bandwidth.
Spam, or electronic communications unwanted by recipients, is a growing problem, to the point that many users receive more spam than desirable email. The problem is even driving pushes for new legislation. Because email travels along global communication networks, though, solutions at the national level are unlikely to succeed. Although anti-spam software exists, spammers are continually modifying the text of their messages, in an evolutionary race to beat anti-spam software. Inevitably, anti-spam software that relies on text filtering is one step behind spam.
Digital email signatures (see, e.g., U.S. Pub. App. 2002/0046250) are known. However, they serve the sender, not the recipient, of a message. U.S. Pub. App. 2003/0028767 discloses a method for enabling email recipients to authenticate an email sender without opening the email.
U.S. Pub. App. 2003/0212791 and U.S. Pub. App. 2004/0024823 disclose methods and systems for authorizing electronic mail, where information on the sender is compared with a list of authorized senders. U.S. Pub. App. 2002/0059525 discloses a method for authentication of email content. However, such method does not prevent unauthorized use of an email address as sender. Indeed, such method compounds the problem, making for the receipt of duplicate e-documents from fake as well as true senders.
Content verification methods are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,656 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,640,301. Those methods require the content of certified messages to be retained.
The Yahoo® email authentication system DomainKeys® allows for verification of the DNS domain of an email sender and the integrity of each email sent.